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SimplyHired Layoffs – What does it mean to the job board industry?

This morning, March 23, I learned that SimplyHired went through a round of Lay-offs on February 2, 2012, as announced on Venture Beat.

When I first heard the news, I did a search on Google, Ere.net, and Jobboarders, and didn’t find any news of the SimplyHired Layoffs. That’s pretty strange to me, considering that SimplyHired is one of the most heavily Venture Capital funded job boards ($22 Million), is strategically partnered with LinkedIn, (a major shareholder from what I hear), and has become a major partner for many job board owners, who either purchase pay-per-click advertising, or partner with the them via their Jobamatic product.

The SimplyHired layoffs apparently included the President/COO Dion Lim, VP of Sales Brian Corey, and most of the sales team.

What does this mean to the job board industry and the future of SimplyHired?
SimplyHired CEO, Gautam Godhwani, emailed VentureBeat, stating “As part of its 2012 strategy, Simply Hired made some changes to its organization.”

As one of the first internet job board founders, www.gojobs.com, the owner of a SimplyHired partnered job board SpeechJobs.org, and a partner of SimplyHired’s two primary PPC competitors, Indeed.com and Topusajobs.com, I’m not surprised by the reorganization.

SimplyHired.com is a great service for both job seekers and employers.
The pay-per-click (ppc) employment advertising niche is a very cost effective, and, in my opinion, one of the most under-utilized advertising options for employers.

From my experience the reorganization was a necessary step.

SimplyHired is not going away anytime soon, I think they just needed to trim their overhead and refocus. Indeed, SimplyHired’s biggest competitor in the ppc employment advertising niche, has done a better job of executing in this small segment of employment advertising.

Unfortunately, with venture capital backing, there are really only two exit strategies for SimplyHired’s investors, go public, or sell. SimplyHired’s CEO, Gautam Godhwani, did what is probably required. With the possibility of going public not very realistic, the next best option is to raise the profitability in the hopes of increasing the multiple for a future acquisition.

Will that acquisition come from Monster or maybe even LinkedIn? With Monster up for sale, I don’t think they are in acquisition mode, so that leaves LinkedIn as one of the few natural alternatives. But, that being said, LinkedIn, is probably better off buying Monster than SimplyHired.

What are your thoughts?

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Ironman Canada 2011 – Hours til the gun.

Tomorrow is the big day… Ironman Canada.

Penticton is a buzz with incredibly fit people.
It’s warm and sunny (80 degrees at 9pm last night).
Apparently, the founder of Ironman Canada chose Penticton, British Columbia because the heat was the closest way of mimicking the conditions of the Ironman World Championship in Hawaii.

I’m a little nervous, but there nothing more I can do. Just relax and take the race one-step-at-a-time… Literally.

Last night we had a pre-race meeting to learn about the course, the aid stations, rules, etc.
There are approximately 3,000 participants, 1,100 of which are Ironman Virgins, like myself.

One of the most memorable tips that I learned was the following: (From the race organizer) (loosely paraphrased)…

‚ÄúYou will go through spouts of depression, pain, and anxiety. It’s natural.
You’ll question your training… your fitness.. your sanity.
One thing is for sure… there are thousands of volunteers, all out there for one purpose… to support you to finish.
When you get depressed, Thank a volunteer. It’s physiologically impossible to be depressed for long, if you are Grateful and Thankful.‚Äù

With that in mind, I want to thank all those how have supported me in the last year. Without all of your support, advice, and encouragement, I never would have been in a position to take on this challenge that has been smoldering around in my brain for that last 15 years.

Some of the memorable quotes from the dinner and meeting were:
From one of the Professional Males – “Everyone will suffer… you’re not alone.”
From Anne (the Australian woman sitting next to me at dinner…. she’s completed 22 Ironman races) – “Take the run step-by-step, minute-by-minute… but just keep moving forward.”
From another Ironman champion… “Take it step-by-step, light pole by light pole, and mile by mile.”
From another Pro – ‚ÄúWhen you feel like you’re in Hell, or going to Hell… just keep going.‚Äù

If you want a little more information about the race, here is a good overview:

To watch my progress (It’s not real time, though):

By bib number is: 1293

Here are some ideas about my progress:
Race start: 7am.
The 2.4 mile Swim will take between 75 to 90 minutes, so I’ll transition (Transition 1) between the swim and bike at approximately : 8:15am ‚Äì 8:30 am.
The 112 mile bike will take between 6 and 7 hours. There will be a couple of timing chip areas that will track my bike progress. I’ll Transition between Bike to Run (T2) somewhere between 2:15pm ‚Äì 3:30pm.
The marathon will take between 4 and ¬? hours to 6+ hours. (The pain is over quicker the faster I go… so I’ll run as far as I can.) That puts me at a finish between 6:15pm (not likely) to 9:30pm. My guess is probably between 8:30-9pm, or so.

My brother-in-law, Jerry, is here with me (Thanks Jerry). He can be reached via my Canada cell phone, if you want updates… (250) 701-9741.

Jonathan Duarte

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IRONMAN: They really don’t know

A couple of days ago, after severely injuring my low back while training for Ironman Canada (coming up in 3 weeks), I was referred to Chiro-Medical, a top notch Athletes Chiropractor and Medical office in San Francisco. (which I highly recommend… my Chiropractor was Daniel Lord, D.C).

With my head in my hands, dealing with the lower back pain, I slowly looked up an saw the following painting and quote on the wall.

Here’s the text from the quote.
Real inspiration. Especially as the date of my first Ironman triathlon looms closer.

They don’t really know!

Everyone seems to know that an IRONMAN is a 2.4 mile swim, a 112 mile bike ride and then a 26.2 mile run. 140.6 miles completed in 17 hours or less. But do they really know? It rolls off of their tongue as easily as discussing the local 5K that they ran or a hard, hot, and challenging ¬? marathon that they survived last summer. But do they really know?

It used to bother you when they said, “IRONMAN, oh yea, that’s really cool. My friend does those all the time. She does like 8 or 10 of them a year, but mostly just local ones though!”

That’s when you realize that They Don’t Know and it’s not important that they do know. It’s only important that you know. IRONMAN is personal, very personal. IRONMAN is everything for that day. There is nothing more important than crossing that line; and you will cross the line, no matter what. Quitting is not an option. IRONMAN defines you and in many cases it redefines you.

IRONMAN is your commitment, dedication, preparation, determination and perseverance to train for an event that in the beginning seems impossible to finish.

IRONMAN is pain, agony and the almost reckless passion of pushing yourself beyond the limits of what you are capable of.

IRONMAN shows you that boundaries are made to be broken. All of this to compete against your own best effort for that day.

At the end of that day, everyone at the finish line knows, and you know that for this day‚Ķ and forever‚Ķ YOU ARE AN IRONMAN!”

– Cole Braun, Founder, RACC, and 8 time Ironman Finisher.

The poster and quote above are for sale, with proceeds benefiting Racers Against Childhood Cancers. To purchase a print, or support RACC, click here

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How to ruin your LinkedIn Personal Brand? Spamming your Network!

I coach people on “Building their LinkedIn Personal Brand”, “LinkedIn Profile Optimization“, and “How-to-use-LinkedIn” to help market themselves. So, I know we all make mistakes when starting to use social and professional networking sites.

That being said, there is no better way to ruin your personal brand than violating Rule #1 –

Never SPAM your LinkedIn Network!

Unfortunately, I’ve been getting a lot more “unsolicited emails” in my LinkedIn Inbox lately. Getting spam in my normal email inbox is pretty easy to deal with. (I use gmail for email. Google does a great job of getting rid of spam for me.)

Getting “unsolicited emails” in LinkedIn is a completely different animal.
With over 13,000 first degree connections, it’s to be somewhat expected that I’m going to get a couple of emails a week from people in my network who break this rule.

I’ll get emails from people I have no relationship with other than a 1st degree connection on LinkedIn, sending me emails to “Click on their Facebook page”, or “Review my resume!”, “Let me know if you hear of any job openings!”, or “I just got sold some great new multi-level marketing scheme. I just spent $500 dollars to learn how I can spam 1,000 people on LinkedIn and then watch my bank account fill up!… Click on this link and you can be an edit too!!!! ”
* The last one is a joke, but I hope you get the picture.

The problem is that LinkedIn doesn’t handle spam very well. In fact I don’t know how it “handles” spam, other than simply giving you a button to tag a single email as “Spam”. I could only hope that they are doing something with the “user indicated spam” emails that ultimately will keep your Inbox clean.

Today, though, I got something even more disturbing… REAL Completely Unsolicited Inbox SPAM.
Look at the email below!

Ruin Your Personal Brand - LinkedIn Spam Image
Ruin Your Personal Brand - LinkedIn Spam

Gold from Ghana!

Great, just what I’m on LinkedIn for… to buy Gold from Ghana.
While this email doesn’t have to do anything with Personal Branding, I think the story is the same.

Don’t send crap emails to people you don’t know, or haven’t explicitly opted-in to receive your marketing messages. It isn’t cool. It wont’ get you friends. And, it certainly won’t promote your personal brand as a friend and expert.

Friends don’t spam Friends!

LinkedIn is about Professional Networking, Building Relationships and Adding Value to your community.
Engaging people in your niche, or industry, or community, while keeping the above in mind should always lead you down the correct path.

Sending emails to people you don’t know, will only make them resent you… and of course, you are the loser… You loose all of your likeability and authority with that person.

If you are going to send emails to your wide network of connections emails… Add Value to their lives. Don’t try to sell them something. I stopped going to “business opportunity” meetings a long time ago… so have most successful professional networkers.

Doing anything less, weakens your own personal brand, because the next time you try to send them something, or ask for advice, or input, they aren’t going to open your email… Even worse, they could decide to remove you from their network!

P.S.
I’m an Open Networker (LION) = Linked In Open Networker. I believe increasing the size of my 3rd Degree Network, allows me to get my profile viewed more often. As a result, I welcome all legitimate LinkedIn Invitations. If you would like to connect to me on LinkedIn, please send me an email through LinkedIn using my networking email address: LION{at}gojobs.com

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LinkedIn Profile Optimization with Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder

I came across this interview of Reid Hoffman, the Founder of LinkedIn, from February 2009.

Reid talks about the importance of LinkedIn profile optimization, from several points of view, including the benefits of personal branding, as well as from a job search perspective.

While it’s an old interview, I think it’s always helpful to hear the founder talk about his views of using LinkedIn for “Pimping your profile!”.